Walking Tours in San Francisco with StreetLore

Popular spots covered in San Francisco

6 hand-picked stops with researched narration. Every listing below ships with a curated lore beat — the same content the app speaks while you walk past.

1. 

   01

   Golden Gate Bridge

   landmark

   Opened May 1937, in the middle of the Depression — a WPA-era project that was supposed to be impossible. The strait is 1.6 km wide with strong currents, deep water, and violent winds. Chief engineer Joseph Strauss originally submitted a design that was hideous; assistant engineer Charles Ellis actually did most of the math that made the Art Deco design work. Ellis was fired from the project before completion and got no credit for decades. The color — 'International Orange' — was chosen partly for visibility in fog, partly because the architect Irving Morrow saw the primer on arriving steel and loved it. The navy wanted it painted yellow with black stripes. Eleven workers died during construction; a safety net caught 19 others, who formed the 'Halfway to Hell Club'. The bridge is painted continuously — when they finish, they start again.

2. 

   02

   Alcatraz Island

   historic

   A 22-acre island in San Francisco Bay that served as a federal penitentiary from 1934 to 1963. Inmates included Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Robert 'Birdman' Stroud (who was barred from having birds on Alcatraz, despite the nickname; he kept his birds at Leavenworth before being transferred). The cold currents and brutal undertow made escape nearly impossible — 36 prisoners tried, most were caught or drowned. The 1962 escape by Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers, who left papier-mâché dummies in their beds and disappeared into the fog on a raft made of raincoats, was never officially solved; the FBI declared them presumed drowned. Before the prison, the island had housed a military fort and was a punishment site for Confederate sympathisers during the Civil War. After the prison closed, Native American activists occupied the island from 1969-71, demanding treaty recognition.

3. 

   03

   Chinatown (Dragon Gate / Grant Avenue)

   landmark

   The oldest Chinatown in North America, continuously inhabited since the 1848 Gold Rush — briefly flattened in the 1906 earthquake, rebuilt with deliberate 'Chinese' architectural exteriors (designed by American architects to attract tourism) that have since become genuine. 30 blocks, the densest neighbourhood in San Francisco. The Dragon Gate at Grant and Bush was a 1969 gift from Taiwan. Walk Grant Avenue north for the tourist version; walk parallel Stockton Street one block west for the real version — old produce markets, Chinese herbalists, dim sum parlours where the carts circulate and the servers speak only Cantonese. The fortune cookie was either invented here (Ross Alley, Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, 1962) or in Japan in the 1870s, depending on who you ask.

4. 

   04

   SFMOMA

   museum

   San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the largest modern art museum in the US outside New York. Founded 1935, moved to the current Mario Botta-designed stripe-cylinder building in 1995, massively expanded in 2016 by Snøhetta (who grafted a rippling white 10-story annex onto the back). The Fisher Collection — Gap founders Don and Doris Fisher's private hoard of 1,100 works including a strong Warhol, Rauschenberg, and Richter holding — became a long-term loan in 2010 and is a significant part of the permanent exhibit. Free for under-18s; tickets steep for adults. The second-floor outdoor Sculpture Terrace is free without museum admission and has an Alexander Calder mobile.

5. 05

   Lombard Street (crooked section)

   landmark

   The 'crookedest street in the world' — eight hairpin turns in a single block on Russian Hill. Not actually the crookedest; Vermont Street in Potrero Hill has tighter turns, and locals like to mention it. Lombard was redesigned in 1922 because the natural 27-degree slope was too steep for cars. The city engineer Carl Henry designed the zigzag to bring it down to 16 degrees. The flowers planted between the turns (hydrangeas mostly) are maintained by the city and the residents alternately. It gets around 2 million visitors a year; residents have repeatedly asked the city to close it to tourists or charge a fee (both shot down). If you go, don't drive it — walk down the stairs on either side; the line of cars at the top is dispiriting.

6. 

   06

   Ferry Building

   historic

   A 1898 Beaux-Arts ferry terminal on the Embarcadero waterfront, with a 245-foot clock tower modeled on Seville's Giralda. Before the Bay Bridge was built in 1936, this was the transit hub for 50,000 commuters a day arriving from Marin, the East Bay and the Peninsula. Went into decline mid-century; the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the adjacent Embarcadero Freeway (finally demolished in 1991), which had blocked the building from the city for decades. Reopened 2003 as a food hall — Cowgirl Creamery (Bay Area cheese), Acme Bread, Hog Island oysters on the half-shell, Blue Bottle Coffee, Slanted Door for Vietnamese. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday farmers' markets are the best small-producer produce market in the state.

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